the peony princess

Hey all!  It's been a bit since I've blogged about watercolor instruction.  I've been crazy with homeschooling my offspring, getting Birds For Babies going and just life in general.  

I DID paint a peony recently, so I thought you'd like to see some step pics and hear about the process.

So, I shot a photo of this peony in my garden, a nice, clear close-up.  After sketching it out large, I started with an entire wet on wet wash over the whole page with Indian Yellow and Permanent Rose.  I tried to stay out of the areas that were white where the sun was the strongest.  This wash should be loose and quick.

Allow your first wash to dry completely, possibly overnight or with a hair dryer.  Now, I'm going to be working petal by petal, jumping around.  I wet an entire petal shape and wash on Ultramarine blue with Violet and Permanent Rose.  On some petals, I only barely touch the edges with color.

I'll post a few pics of me just continuing to work petal by petal.  Make sure that when you start one petal, that the petals adjacent to it are completely dry or else you will have a mess of bleeding colors.  Keep your edges neat by not wetting all the way to the edge and then painting to the edge with your brush loaded with color.

I'm generally using the same mix of all of those colors, varying the color intensity as I interpret it from the photo.  The shadows all have the same colors as well.  I love the process of seeing it being carved out of the page, almost 3-D -ish...if that's a word.

So, I need to make the decision as to whether or not I'm going to put a dark background on in the corners.  I decided to put a dark background on, but afterwards, I regretted it.  I think if I ever paint this again, I will leave the corners white b/c the impact is more delicate.

Towards the very end, I glazed on a wash of Indian Yellow to warm things up...but looking back at the pics, I'm undecided if it improved it or not.  It was definitely a learning experience!

Here it is framed!

Happy painting, my fellow artists!

Luv,

Cady

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